


i've always been in love with you (could you tell it from the moment that i met you?)

by Appleface



Category: Portrait de la jeune fille en feu | Portrait of a Lady on Fire (2019)
Genre: F/F, From the perspective of Héloïse, I hope you don't hate it I just need to get my emotions about this film out!!!, Retelling, reference to suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-20
Updated: 2020-05-04
Packaged: 2021-03-01 19:22:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 17,885
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23752291
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Appleface/pseuds/Appleface
Summary: I am looking at the cliffs. Jagged and stony, with a steep drop below. They stand not far in front of me, and beyond that is the sky, torn and blue.I am overcome. I run.Where was Héloïse's mind during this love story?
Relationships: Héloïse & Marianne (Portrait of a Lady on Fire), Héloïse/Marianne (Portrait of a Lady on Fire)
Comments: 100
Kudos: 196





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Scenes retold from the perspective of Héloïse. Just my interpretation of what she was thinking, of course! This is mostly just a coping mechanism for myself to process the emotions this film brought to light, though I do hope you enjoy!  
> Apologies for any dialogue that's off from the actual film.
> 
> The title is taken from the song 'The End of Love' by Florence + The Machine.

I sit in my pale room and imagine what she must look like.

Marianne. What kind of name is Marianne? A brunette or a blonde? I have never known one. Maybe she’ll have ginger hair, like curling fire. That thought might've risen a smile to my face, if I were in some other time.

I stand and move to the window. All I have done today is stand and sit and wait for the right time, but nobody is going to tell me when I can or cannot go. I think now is the perfect time, and I have waited long enough.

I find Sophie in the halls. When she looks at me, her doe eyes flicker, and I know she sees my sister when she looks at me. She hasn’t avoided my eyes though, not once. I admire that, but that’s not something she needs to know.

“I’m going to go out,” I tell her, “I’ll wait by the door.”

Sophie doesn’t blink and says: “Marianne will be with you shortly.”

I stand facing the door at the bottom of the stairs, hood pulled up over my hair. I am impatient enough that, by the time I hear the set of footsteps reach the bottom steps, I lurch forward and out the door. The path I have traced with my eyes from my window every day lies untangled before me. My instinct is to move quick, but I stay composed and take my time. I want to savour this. I’m so focused that, when my hood falls, I don’t fix it.

I nearly forget that this woman is behind me. Marianne. I haven’t seen her yet, and maybe that’s rude, and maybe I should greet her. But greeting seems so trivial and forced. I march on, and trust that she is following, even when I can’t hear her there.

The grass swishes, interrupted, behind me as the landscape unfolds, so I know she’s still there. I wonder what she’s looking at. At these surroundings? At me? At the sea or the cliffs?

I am looking at the cliffs. Jagged and stony, with a steep drop below. They stand not far in front of me, and beyond that is the sky, torn and blue.

I am overcome. I run.

The wind scrapes my cheeks and tangles my hair. My cloak and dress billow out like the sails of a ship. But unlike a ship, I cannot cross the ocean. So I stop at the edge of the rock.

I’m not stupid. I know what it must’ve looked like. It's clear in Marianne’s face when I turn my head back to look at her and see that she hasn’t got red hair. It’s dark and pinned up in a similar style to mine. She has a sharp face. She was running after me, I realise, and the relief in her expression is surprising to me.

“I’ve dreamt of that for years,” I tell her.

“Dying?” she asks, breathless from the chase she gave.

Again - some other day, I might’ve laughed. “Running,” I correct her without a moment taken to breathe. It’s afterwards that I swallow the wind, and walk on. Marianne follows.

\--

We walk again, and again. I don’t speak to her much. But I do catch her staring, very often.

I caught it the first day too. Most times that I looked, she would look away. It was like a game that I won every time. If she wants to see me, I have to look back at her. What does she expect? For me to shut my eyes? I think, for some time, that she lacks bravery in that sense.

We have a conversation one of the days on the beach where I finally find boldness in Marianne.

“Do you think she wanted to die?” she asks, regarding my sister.

I look up at her, and see she is unfazed. She doesn’t apologize for asking.

“You are the first person unafraid to ask that,” I tell her earnestly.

“Apart from you,” she points out, which is true.

The conversation holds. Marianne looks me in the eye, unwavering, at every opportunity. She surprises me again.

“You can choose,” I say, regarding her indifference to the subject of marriage, “that’s why you don’t understand me.”

I have spoken such harsh words before, to other women, under different circumstances. Everyone has floundered or blushed. They always look away.

Marianne, who has been eyeing the sand until then, looks up at me.

“I understand you,” she says, with the utmost conviction. Something so obvious.

I may even believe her.

\--

The house doesn’t hold much interest, so one of these long days, I go searching for some release. Marianne’s door appears like a ghost before me.

“Marianne?” I call her name through the wall, for maybe the first time. I let myself in, and hear some flustered rustling from behind a long curtain that covers up half the room, and in front of that is a mirror that faces the other wall. I noticed it the first time, but I say nothing about it. I’m not entitled to know everything about Marianne, or anything at all. But that doesn’t mean I’m not curious.

I am tempted to unnerve her a little, so when she emerges from behind the strung-up sheet, I am sat with folded hands on the seat in the middle of the room. She watches me with shivering eyes, and I am satisfied. I don’t ask why she is missing the top part of her dress, and instead, I ask if she has any tobacco.

She does. We do. I even smile in silent thanks, though I’m not sure if she notices. I watch the smoke trail out of her mouth.

“Your mother will let you go out alone tomorrow,” Marianne says, and I wonder when she has been talking to my mother. “You’ll be free.”

“Being free is being alone?” I challenge, sucking the smoke from the pipe.

“You don’t think so?”

“I’ll tell you tomorrow.”

Our talk leads to a discussion of music. I enjoy her expression when I tell her that I’ve never heard an orchestra, and she is slapped by my severe lack of freedom. I enjoy, also, how she nearly laughs when I ask her to describe the music to me.

Marianne does another unexpected thing and moves towards the harpsichord. She smiles at me, earnestly this time, with a few fingers on the keys. She sits down, and I move up next to her. The harsh noises become notes, and then music as she goes on. I sit next to her, asking if it’s a merry piece.

“Not merry, but it’s lively,” she says as I join her before the instrument. It’s nearly a natural thing, to sit by her. Not something to be thought about too hard.

And then she looks right at me, and I look right back. Her stare is dark, and for just a moment it flickers to my mouth before she returns her attention to the harpsichord. I don’t have time to wonder about it.

“It’s about a coming storm,” she says, and her fingers drum on the keys, the sound picking up, swirling like the wind.

“The insects sense it,” she says, glancing back at me with casual confidence. I don’t realise my own awe until she looks at me and whispers: “They become agitated.” She enjoys the glimmer in my stare, I can tell.

Chills pinprick up and down my neck. I look at her while she plays. Marianne, I realise, is not the name of a brunette or blonde or ginger. It’s the name of a storm.

“And then the storm brakes.”

She is more of a storm than I expected her to be.

“With the lightning and wind.”

Sweeping me up with the wind, with her music. I feel it, cold on my neck, as she concentrates hard on the keys.

“I can’t remember it…”

I imagine she would taste like windswept summer, if I kissed her.

She breaks the illusion too soon. “You’ll hear the rest. Milan is a city of music.”

The room bleeds back almost instantly. I remember where we are, what time, what circumstance. My face falls, the candle blown out from my stare. Marianne notices her mistake rather quickly. “Then I can’t wait for Milan.” I bite.

I look away from her, though it takes some effort.

“I’m saying there will be good things,” Marianne tries to correct herself.

“You’re saying that, now and then,” I meet her eyes again. “I’ll be consoled.”

I can sense her guilt, but it’s not enough. The flames lick her face from the other side of the room. She’s breathing with her mouth open.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm glad to hear you enjoy reading this as much as I enjoy writing it!   
> I wrote this chapter in a sort of fervor, so I hope it reads well.

My mother comes to speak to me often. I don’t know what she does other times. It’s a large house, and very often we just wander about it like ghosts. Our conversations are stilted these days, lacking the brazen emotion we both showed each other when Suzanne left us in the heat of our grief. I’m still angry, of course, and mother knows that. She’s not angry, however, but sad. She’s the kind who prefers to cry than shout or scorn. Suzanne took after her in that way, I think. I often wonder where I got my fire from.

When I’m with her, I can only think of one thing to speak of.

“Marianne played me a piece on the harpsichord,” I tell her while we eat.

Her eyes brighten, if only slightly. “Which piece?”

“I don’t know. It was about a summer storm.”

She smiles, nods. Takes a bite of bread. “Vivaldi. I can’t wait to hear it in full when we’re in Milan.”

She senses my tension from across the table, and sighs out through her nose. Wisely, she switches the subject away from my doom. “You’re fond of her? Marianne?”

“Why do you ask?”

“You speak a lot of her when we are together.”

I take a bite of bread, and take time to swallow it. It’s as dry and grey as this room is when the fire is unlit. “I catch her looking at me. Often.”

I haven’t said that to anybody.

“She must be mesmerised by you,” says my mother, who has tilted her head away from me, and thought there’s amusement in her tone, her voice has a slight tremor to it. I ignore it, for now.

Marianne is not mesmerised by me. It was me who wanted to kiss her by the harpsichord.

How strange things are, these days. I tear off more of the stony bread.

\--

Marianne said that organ music is dull. Maybe she’s right, and maybe I would much rather listen to that riveting storm she played me. But, as I sit alone in mass, I shut my eyes and listen to the music. And I smile! I smile, by myself, and I sing too. I leave on a high.

Afterwards, I walk on the beach for a moment before returning. It’s lovely, to be alone. But some of the time, I cast a glance over my shoulder, as if she might have followed me out. I am not one to run from my feelings, no matter how little I understand them. What I do understand is that I would like to catch her watching me again. And right now, I don’t fear the feeling. So I take charge while I can.

When I return to the house, I find Marianne and she acts strangely, turning away from me a few times. The rush of delight I feel in seeing her only propels me forward, to tell her what I am feeling.

“Will you come out tomorrow?”

“Yes.”

I smile. She has made me do that a few times now. “In solitude I felt the liberty you spoke of.”

Her eyes shut for a moment after that. A slow blink.

I lose my smile. “But I also felt your absence.”

She turns her head away from me, and leaves without a word in return.

Maybe I have misread things.

\--

We sit together on the beach. I managed to distract myself with her book, which she lent me. A collection of Ovid’s works. The one I am sucked into is about a man who falls in love with his sculpture. The cruel irony of that, to only find love in someone who cannot love you back. I would feel for him if he hadn’t hated women with such a passion before he fell for his own piece.

“Héloïse…” Marianne says the first time. I hear her but don’t look up, too invested in this story, until she explains her use of my name: “I must tell you something.”

When I look up to her tilted head, her mouth is small and open, as if she is bracing herself to speak. She lets out a little breath before her confession, and even in that, there’s a shiver in her tone. “I’m a painter.”

Oh.

“I came here to paint you.”

It crashes down like the waves.

“I’ve finished your portrait,” she utters, in a smaller voice.

For a moment I can do nothing but stare.

I don’t know if I’m surprised. I suppose all this bliss couldn’t have lasted. My eyelids flutter and my mouth twitches. I look down at the book again.

“I see now why you praised the charms of exile,” the words spill out, “You felt guilty.”

Her expression says it all. She still feels guilty, but that’s not enough. I put the book down, and look off. Away from her.

“Are you leaving?” is what I ask eventually. It’s a strange question to ask your betrayer, and Marianne seems to think so too. Her eyes dart up and down. She thinks she’s missing something, but she isn’t. This is just my reaction. I shouldn’t want her to stay, yet I wish she would.

She won’t. “Later today. With your mother.”

With my mother.

I look out to the sea. “Then I shall bathe today.”

I know that I could stand here and strip my dress, but something propels me forward. Some final, taunting dare lives inside me. A candle flame, always burning. So I walk up to the shore, with my back to Marianne, and I undress then.

I wonder if she’s looking, and I hate that I care. I hate that I want her to look at me, even after her lies. I hate that amongst the fury she raises in me burns something else. Maybe the ocean with dampen this flame.

The water is cold, but I wade in anyway. I stride against the waves as they try to push me back. It comes to my calves, then my thighs and my hips. How far could I get before I’m drowned, sucked underneath? I think of my sister, broken on the rocks. I could easily do the same.

Marianne hasn’t rushed after me like she did the day we met. She trusts that I amn’t here to die. What a bold assumption! If she’s wrong, then I may emerge with the tide like a dead jellyfish. Like Suzanne.

I shut my eyes before diving underneath the water. I know that I don’t want to die. But I don’t know if I want to live either, if this is what it is to be alive.

I come up eventually, and wade back out, the cold prickling my pale skin. My teeth begin to chatter, and the sound ricochets around my head. I collect my clothes and pull them on half-heartedly. I purposely don’t look at Marianne as I emerge, but I still sit by her. Shivering and soaked by the sea.

“Well, can you swim?” she asks. There’s some hint of a tease under her tone. Maybe even annoyance. I ignore it, pointedly.

“I still don’t know if I can,” I admit. My mind had been somewhere else, so much that I didn’t notice. “Did you see me?”

“You can float,” Marianne says, which draws my attention. She dares to crack a smile, and I can’t help but do the same. Something funny! How strange. She hid humour along with her other secrets.

“Let’s go back,” she says, once I look away. Any teasing vanished from her tone.

I shake my head, although I know I’ll have to eventually. If I had been warned that this was my last stroll on the beach, maybe I’d have taken it more carefully. Maybe I’d have finished my book. Or Marianne’s book, I suppose. Now I’ll have to give it back to her. Another piece of freedom taken from me.

Something else comes to mind. And what a better time to be bold then now, when I have nothing left to lose?

“It explains all your looks.”

And I stare at her. Her eyebrows arch, and she says nothing in response. I could laugh.

\--

When she shows me the painting, I squint. I move in close and stand back. I blink and blink and blink again.

“You’re saying nothing?” she asks, hands clasped.

What does she want me to say? To this pale imitation? Somebody entirely different sits before me on the canvas.

“Is that me?” is what I settle on. The horror in Marianne’s expression is almost funny, but this is no joke.

“Yes,” she says, hands on hips. Eyebrows raised, again. She looks entirely outraged. How can she be the one that’s outraged?

We argue. I think I make my point. At one interval, I may let something slip, a little more than I would’ve intended. But what is there left to care about? This is the end of it. This is my portrait. This is who I’ll be to everybody who doesn’t know me. And what’s worse is that maybe this is who I am to Marianne.

I leave her scathed, and go to fetch my mother. I find some triumph in Marianne’s speechless demeanour and bruised pride. Now, at least, we will part ways both fuming.

“Mother,” I call coldly as I enter the kitchen. She is sat with Sophie stood by her. I realise that she must’ve been in on it to. The whole household! Plotting behind my back, to ship me away towards my doom. My mother looks up with watery eyes, some pain to be found buried in there. We don’t speak on the way to the reception room, but I feel that she’s close to saying something. Not an apology, though. She could never.

When we walk back in, my mother goes first. When I follow, Marianne looks up and meets my eyes for a fleeting moment. She looks stunned, like she didn’t expect my return. Her hands are pale and shivering, grasping at her sides for something to hold onto. My mother starts to speak, and then stops herself. She goes straight for the painting, and at first I don’t understand. Marianne’s eyes beg something of me.

I stride over and see the image, malformed. Face scrubbed by cloth. Paint swirled. Destroyed. When I whirl around, Marianne looks mortified.

God. I could kiss her. I imagine it for a fleeting moment, rushing forward, mouth on mouth. Her hands on my neck. The world would run away like paint down the page. It takes all I have to keep from grinning.

“It wasn’t good enough. I’ll start again.” Marianne says with a slight tremble in her voice, to my mother.

“You’re joking,” says my mother in a flat voice.

Marianne scrambles, though one would never know. Maybe I know her better than I thought. “I’m sorry. It wasn’t satisfactory.”

“You’re incompetent, then. You can leave.”

It doesn’t take a moment’s consideration for my mind to be made up. “She’s staying,” I say, curtly, from some steps away. The eyes of both women fall upon me. One pair panicked and confused, the other frothing with irritation.

I elaborate easily. “I’ll pose for her.”

This is the breaking point. “Really?” whispers my mother.

“Yes.”

Marianne, too, is in shock. But maybe not a bad kind of shock.

Mother approaches me. I glare at her, but not with malice. I don’t think I hate her, even now.

“Why?” she asks, in genuine awe.

“What does it change for you?” I ask.

It does sink in a little, just what I’ve agreed to. But there’s no avoiding it, I suppose. And what’s a better way to spend my final days of freedom, than with the painter who destroyed the idea of who I should be?

Though, she hasn’t won it all. There is still some challenge yet to be foiled.

We are given five days. I begin counting down the seconds.

\--

The dress is emerald green, and it’s mine, I suppose. It feels large and grand, like an announcement. It’s not something I could run in.

The stage is set when I arrive. This side of Marianne is prompt and organised. The artist, the painter. It’s all deeply interesting, to see her in her natural habitat.

I sit where she tells me to. I rest my arm when she asks, but the pose is awkward.

“Not like that,” she says, “May I?”

I say yes, but she’s already moving. Marianne adjusts my arm, and the touch is fleeting. She has warm hands, unexpectedly. Though I don’t know how I expected her hands to feel. As soon as she lets go, I feel a loss. So when she tells me: “Take your hand,” I do it awkwardly again, watching her all the while.

“The other way, like this…” she says, and then she does it for me, which she didn’t need to. Was she making an excuse to touch me again? I swallow, and tell myself to stop with my analysis. And yet I take in her touch until she steps away. I follow her finger, raising my chin until she nods.

“Are you comfortable?”

“Yes.”

This Marianne is all business. Confident. In her element. She moves to her easel, fixes her things. Entirely calm. This is routine.

“Look at me.”

She asks, and yet when I do, she seems shocked. Thunderstruck.

That’s not routine.

She’s breathing through her mouth again.

Any doubt leaves me like a spirit passing through. In her stare lies something so telling.

The storm brakes.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A part of me wants to space out these chapters a little more and create some sort of upload schedule but the other part of me just keeps writing and gets overexcited. It's been a whole five years since I wrote any fanfiction and I forgot how much fun it was!  
> Anyway. Here's chapter three.

The next morning I am immediately loaded with information in the kitchen, where Marianne and Sophie sit solemnly together before me. I wonder first if it’s an intervention. Maybe Marianne has fooled me again, and the pair of them are here to perform an exorcism on me due to my ‘unnatural’ feelings. That would be extremely cruel, so for a moment I’m glad to hear that this is not the present situation. When they tell me that Sophie is pregnant and doesn’t want a child, I don’t know how I feel.

What surprises me is that the pair of them look to me as though for permission. It slipped my mind, nearly, that I am technically the closest thing to head of the house at this moment, and that Marianne and Sophie are employees.

“Well, what can we do?” I ask, hands folded on the table. Relief exhales from both their mouths, and we all talk like normal people.

Marianne has a suggestion, which we follow first. Sophie runs on the beach, back and forth from me to Marianne and back again. She becomes breathless soon, and though Marianne pushes her onwards, she’s soon to fall.

“… I can’t do it,” I hear her say as I walk over. She’s such a small thing, curled in the sand like a nestled seashell.

I give her my hand, which she looks to with surprise. Sophie takes it and allows me to help her up. She looks at me, for the first time in my memory, with eyes that are meant for me and not my sister.

We spend some time in the grass. This is Sophie’s suggestion. In the end, she’s the one who finds the plant, and we trudge back to the house with some conversation between us. The silences are not awkward, though. This isn’t something shameful, or at least it shouldn’t be.

\--

Later, I sit at the table and watch Sophie dangle from the ceiling overhead. She explained earlier to me, what this was meant to do. But I don’t understand it the same way she does, or the same way Marianne does, it seems. She sits at the table with me and goes to smoke, lighting her pipe by the candle. Memory crosses over in her eyes, and I know the answer to my question before I ask it: “Has it happened to you?”

There’s a struggling pause, and for a second I think that she didn’t hear me, despite my lone voice in the room. But then Marianne blows out the flame, abandoning her pipe. “Yes,” she confirms, somewhat solemnly.

She’s not ashamed. I admire that, greatly, and maybe it’s my admiration that pushes me to speak again, or maybe it’s the candle that flickers on between us.

“You’ve known love.”

It’s not really a question, but I want an answer anyway. I watch Marianne for her response.

She seems rattled. Scared, suddenly. Of me? Of my brashness? She should be used to that by now. And yet my own question has risen a tapping of my heart, like a hammer to a nail. The noise fills my throat. Something like fear or anticipation.

Before my eyes, something melts in Marianne. It’s barely noticeable aside from in her response: “Yes.”

I can’t stop myself. “What’s it like?”

Marianne’s laugh is extremely slight and nervous. She doesn’t break, remains entirely frozen. She’s shivery in her reply: “It’s difficult to say.”

I’m frozen too. I don’t know how to move anymore.

“I mean how does it feel?” I press further.

Marianne flutters and yet remains entirely still.

I think my heart is beating too loudly; there might be something wrong with me. But I don’t think this is wrong. It doesn’t feel wrong. Just terrifying.

Marianne’s mouth moves only slightly. She might say something.

And then Sophie falls, and we have more pressing matters to deal with.

\--

I rest where Marianne usually sleeps, next to Sophie. I nearly fall asleep while she is gone to light the fire, and am only woken by the sound of scratching.

I stay still and drift in and out. But then I fixate. I try to understand the sound without opening my eyes.

I recognize it from yesterday, suddenly. Sketching. I open my eyes a crack.

For a moment, I am looking at her while she isn’t looking at me. I wonder how many times she has seen me this way, while I didn’t know I was being watched. It’s always much more interesting when they look back, which Marianne does.

She hesitates. Wonders if I’ll go up in flames.

But I’m not mad. I move slowly, teasing out my movements just to watch her reaction. I pull one hand from where it was nestled beneath the pillow, and turn onto my back. I pull the other arm across myself, and then relax on the pillows. Posing for her.

Something melts in Marianne again. She smiles, very slightly. I can’t help but return it.

She keeps sketching, and I watch her all the while.

\--

Modelling is boring. And stiffening. And silent. But it gives me time to observe Marianne in her element. And the moments where a conversation occurs are often cause for thrill.

I sense this one coming from a mile off. Marianne stares at her work in disappointment.

“I can’t make you smile,” she confesses, nearly to herself. “I feel I do it and then it vanishes.”

She looks up, implicating me. I nearly find this comment funny, but resist a proper smile. She’s getting too many of those recently. “Anger always comes to the fore.”

“Certainly with you,” she says without a moments consideration.

Any amusement falls off my face. I narrow my stare and deliver a slow exhale.

Marianne picks up on this, gives a fluttery blink. “I didn’t mean to hurt you,” she says, genuinely.

Does she mean now, or in general? I release from my pose momentarily, bringing my hand to my mouth and pulling at my lips. “You haven’t hurt me.”

“I have, I can tell,” Marianne says again, so easily. “When you’re hurt you do this with your hand.”

Alright. That catches me. I bite my lip and hold back a smile, along with redness in my cheeks. “Really?”

“Yes,” says Marianne, and then she freezes. For this pause, she thinks. I watch her make the conscious decision, and then she squints, and there’s a confident shift in her tone. “And when you’re embarrassed…”

She hesitates. Intentionally. And, like a child, I wait patiently for her word.

“You bite your lip.”

My amusement vanishes in a puff of smoke. Slowly, I stop biting my lip and glower at her. This is teasing, and she’s enjoying it.

She’s not done. “And when you’re annoyed...”

Don’t. I stare at her.

“You don’t blink.”

I blink. “You know it all.”

Marianne is delighted, though that’s not revealed by a telling grin. The confidence shines from her eyes and poise and easy breathing. She can say all this to me comfortably, because it’s her job to observe me, and know these things about me. She’s the painter observing the model. “Forgive me, I’d hate to be in your place.”

Marianne nearly goes back to the painting, because she thinks she has won. She hasn’t. There’s nothing to win.

“We’re in the same place,” I release the pose, drawing her attention. “Exactly the same place.”

Marianne stares at me, not knowing how to respond, because I’ve stopped posing for her. If I don’t pose, she can’t make this portrait. Art is made by two.

I know what to do. “Come here.”

Marianne stares at me.

“Come.”

She flutters her eyelids again. And then she walks over to me. I watch her approach, and she stands before me.

“Step closer,” I tell her, the same way she told me how to pose. She steps closer. I flick my gaze up, taking her in as she stands so close.

“Look,” I nod across the room.

She does so. Without question.

So I observe her. I take her in. The colour of her skin. The darkness of her eyes and hair. The shape of her nose and lips.

“When you look at me,” I propose, “who do I look at?”

Marianne doesn’t return the gaze immediately. First, she looks down. Raises fingers to her forehead.

Ah. I seize the opportunity. “When you don’t know what to say, you touch your forehead.”

Marianne looks at me then, and my rabbit heart quickens. A smile flickers like flame on my face.

She huffs. Glances away, tries to pretend it means nothing that I, the model, have noticed things too. Her eyebrows are risen.

“When you lose control, you raise your eyebrows.”

Oh. It begins to dawn on both of us. Marianne swivels her head so slowly and by the time she meets my eyes, I don’t know how I will look away again.

We take in each other’s gazes.

Has she been this close to me before?

Is it my heartbeat I’m listening to, or is it hers?

“And when you’re troubled,” I manage, nearly trembling. “You breathe through your mouth.”

Oh.

I look at her mouth and then at her eyes. She mirrors me with her quick glances.

Oh.

Oh.

We are so close together.

And then. Marianne tears away.

Once again, the room bleeds back. Marianne doesn’t fill the space anymore. She returns behind the canvas, though now she knows that we stand on equal ground. My annoyance flares up, and I make no attempt to hide it now I know she can tell.

As she returns, with now-shaky hands, to the paint, an awful thought passes like a raincloud.

What if that was the closest I will ever get to Marianne?

No, it can’t be. It won’t.

I imagine it now. In my mind, I stand in this emerald dress and run to her. I kiss her, and she gets paint on my face. And all the while, we stand on the same floor. Equal ground. I think on that, while she paints me, and once or twice I nearly go to her.

It’s always nearly.

Time ticks on outside the window.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Updates may begin to slow down, as I've recently gotten a slew of commission work to get to! But I'll probably be able to post the next chapter either tomorrow or the day after that.  
> Again, thank you for the lovely feedback and enjoy.

Time becomes blurry. I feel as though I have friends, suddenly. Or at least it feels that way when Sophie’s between Marianne and I.

I’ve forgotten, a little, what it’s like to have fun. Maybe I never knew at all, because I can’t remember the last time I became quite as animated as I do when we play cards.

At first I’m composed, but slowly I start to gasp and argue and slam my hand over the cards. Marianne and Sophie begin to laugh at me.

Sophie’s rather good, and argues her way out of my protests with sly shrugs.

“Try to concentrate,” Marianne say, observing me through her daring eyes and carrying a proud smile. I squint at her, and pretend to be unamused.

We slam card after card. Marianne accuses me of cheating, which I vehemently deny.

“I play fast,” I tell her pointedly, and can’t resist giddy laughter. Marianne continues to look at me, and I glance up and down and up and down. In the corner of my eye, Sophie makes some slight humming sound, but says nothing.

Slam.

“Two.”

“Two cards.”

“Two.”

“Two sixes!” cries Marianne.

I throw my hands to my face in sheer horror, leaning back. “Oh, no!”

“I win!” delights Marianne.

“You win, yes.”

Sophie’s eyes dart back and forth.

We play on and on. I’m very vocal with instructions. I blame my future losses on Marianne’s growing smile, which stretches up to her eyes. I haven’t seen her smile like that, so it’s difficult to concentrate on the cards. But then, slam! She looks upon me with eyes alit. I stare back at her, and we stay like that until Sophie coughs. It’s a wonderful evening.

\--

The next day we’re painting again. I sit, poised and focused, with a grey scarf draped over my neck. Marianne is wearing a beige sort of shirt for the painting and looks very professional. She steps back and looks up at me. “Uncover your throat.”

I pull it back a little.

Marianne is looking at my neck. “More,” she says quietly, somewhat distracted. I pull it away entirely and turn my mind elsewhere to try and stop reading into her tone.

I look her up and down. “You have my future husband in mind.”

Marianne seems caught out for a moment. Trying to decide if it’s a joke or not (I’m not too sure myself). She chooses to ignore me. Maybe not the best place to begin a conversation, even if it’s true.

The portrait is taking shape, and though I won’t admit it, I greatly prefer it to the one Marianne destroyed. This version of me holds some command and intensity, and she’s not smiling, of course. So, I slowly realise the extent of Marianne’s talent. And I can’t help but pry.

“Do you paint nude models?” I ask her after a moment’s pause.

This time she responds, despite focusing intently on the portrait. "Women, yes.”

“Why not men?”

“I’m not allowed to.”

“Why?” I ask.

There’s some strain in her voice. “Because I’m a woman.”

“Is it a matter of modesty?” I ask with a dry tongue because I feel it may be more than that.

“It’s mostly to prevent us doing great art,” Marianne says, “Without any notion of male anatomy, the major subjects escape us.”

I furrow my brows. It’s not surprising to hear, but infuriating all the same. “How do you manage?”

Marianne finally looks up at me, and there’s some light in her expression. “I do it in secret,” she tells me, and dips her paintbrush into the palette. “It’s tolerated.”

She shrugs, and slightly raises an eyebrow. Some of the stiffness has left her.

Marianne returns to the painting, but I’m not finished. I smile unapologetically as I ask another question: “What do you tell your models to amuse them?”

Marianne’s words are flat, but I can see the crook of her smile from behind the canvas. “Are you bored?”

“No!” I protest, trying to remain still. “I’m interested in you.”

It’s true, and she must know it. Even I can feel that my stare is shining, and my face glows with intrigue towards her. But I think that Marianne will ignore this question too. For what seems like some time, she returns to painting.

Her words seem to come out of nowhere, so casual. “Your complexion is remarkable today.”

Oh. What? I don’t move. Was that a joke? Marianne glances back and forth between the portrait and I three times, each time I count.

I think that maybe I imagined it until she pulls away and dips her paintbrush again, saying: “You’re very elegant.”

She throws me a longer look as she returns to the canvas. I have to physically restrain myself from biting my lip. She shuts her mouth for a moment. It might be over.

It’s not. “You pose beautifully.”

Oh god. I’ve forgotten how to breathe. I try to do it covertly, through my nose, but I’m distracted once again, as Marianne pulls away from the portrait. She fixes me with an entirely deliberate stare. No more glancing.

“You’re pretty,” she says.

I must look a wreck. I bite my cheeks inside my mouth, and don’t look away from her. I might have died and gone to heaven.

Marianne doesn’t pull away. And then she blinks. “That’s what I tell them.”

The moment flutters in the air between us, and then I realise. My heart starts up again and the smile splits my face like the sun emerging through the clouds. Across the room, a prideful grin appears across Marianne’s cheeks, similar to the teasing one she gave me while we played cards the night before. I certainly feel cheated.

I laugh and laugh, and we don’t talk about it. She soon returns to painting me, and I have to smother my embarrassment. But the things she said leave me shaken from composure for the rest of the day.

\--

I help make dinner, and the three of us drink a lot. Which may have prompted the sheer chaos brought on by my reading of Marianne’s little book.

It’s the tale of Orpheus and Eurydice. Marianne knows it, but listens intently anyway, while Sophie and I delve in. Sophie particularly, has many opinions on the story.

When Eurydice is drawn back into the Underworld after Orpheus turns, Sophie is outraged. “That’s horrible,” she says, sitting up and ready to challenge. “Poor woman. Why did he turn? He was told not to but did, for no reason.”

“There are reasons,” says Marianne softly, speaking for the first time in a while.

“You think so?” Sophie sounds skeptical. “Read it again.”

I do. But Sophie is unsatisfied. “No, he can’t look at her for fear of losing her. That’s no reason. He was told not to do that!”.

“He’s madly in love,” I protest, despite understanding her bitterness. “He can’t resist.”

“I think Sophie has a point,” says Marianne, and of course I hang on her every word until she makes her daring point, which she turns to me to deliver: “He chooses the memory of her. That’s why he turns.”

Upon looking at me, Marianne continues with that softness in her voice again. “He doesn’t make the lover’s choice, but the poet’s.”

I stare at her until I remember there is one line left. I turn back to the book and read it’s ending.

“She spoke a last farewell that scarcely reached his ears and fell back into the abyss.”

And there it ends. Eurydice’s farewell is prepared. Her acceptance and forgiveness are immediate. I blink once, twice. Three times.

“Perhaps she was the one who said,” I look up again, at Marianne of course. “Turn around.”

The ghost of a smile grazes her lips but soon falls away to her famous open mouth.

\--

I’ve never been to a bonfire. I find the suggestion rather daunting, but Sophie tells us she needs to speak with a woman there to discover if she is still pregnant. That’s enough for Marianne and I, so we don our coats and walk against the painted landscape.

Our walk there is mostly spent in comfortable silence. Once or twice, Marianne falls into step with me. Sophie glances back at one interval and then quickens her pace so she leaves us both beside each other. Three times I attempt to say something, only to realise I don’t know what to say. Marianne doesn’t push the words out of me. Soon enough, we catch up to Sophie and walk with her the rest of the way.

It’s not long before I hear the voices of other people. Soon I realise it’s women and only women. Girls too, I suppose, and old women. They’re of all ages. Stood around the blazing fire and talking, laughing like real people. It’s mesmerising. The three of us walk off in different directions without much thought towards it.

As I drop my cloak on the grass, I think about speaking to somebody. Would these women understand my feelings regarding my sister, or my mother, or my pending marriage? Maybe they would, but even if they did, I don’t want to spend time tonight thinking of those things.

What would they think of me if I told them how I felt about Marianne?

I won’t, of course. What would I even say? How do I get the words across? I could say how I feel jittery and faint sometimes when she’s around. How I flush when I think of her, or when she speaks in her soft voice to me. The amount of times I’ve just sat and shut my eyes and imagined her. Touching me. On top of me, underneath me. Kissing me. Sometimes just speaking with me. Being next to me. I miss her often, even if she’s only in the other room.

But maybe they would tell me it was an illness. The flaming cheeks. Forgetting how to breathe or stand or act as I normally would. All the symptoms are there. But even without those, everybody would think I’m sick or broken.

All these thoughts are swept away by the raising of voices.

The women gather together, walking past me to join in song. Their music fills the blackness above our heads. And it all comes from their throats.

They clap. They chant. They whisper and shout.

_Fugere non possum._

There’s such an excitement about it. I look across at Marianne, so that when she turns to me I’m already waiting. Her face is lit up by the amber flames, but even without them she would be glowing. She’s always glowing.

The fire sparks, and I just stand there and listen and look at Marianne.

_Fugere non possum._

I would walk right through the flames just to get to her. My thoughts run of their own accord again, and I let them. Because something so wonderful can’t be wrong.

_Fugere non possum._

I don’t feel sick. I feel alive.

I turn my full body towards Marianne. Maybe tomorrow I’ll be weak at the knees and forget how to behave. Right now these feelings don’t scare me.

_Fugere non possum._

I can’t look away. It feels impossible.

_Fugere non possum._

I walk around the fire.

_Fugere non possum._

And it’s only when I’m away from the heat that I feel it still close to me. Marianne’s dark eyes widen.

Their voices echo in the dark, and cut out all at once.

I look down. My dress is caught on fire. And I am somehow unsurprised.

All I know to do is look back up at Marianne.

Who hasn’t taken her eyes off me.

I think they might be singing again.

Two women rush over, and I collapse, my mouth a straight line. The fire on my dress is quickly extinguished, and I’m perfectly, entirely alive. Even more so when Marianne rushes towards me and extends her hand.

I take it. I don’t want to let it go.

This is what it is to be alive.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My workload has picked up quite a bit, so my uploads certainly won't be so consistent after today! But of course, I'll continue till the end.  
> Enjoy.

That night I don’t sleep. I spend the whole time awake, thinking of Marianne.

It’s madness. I nearly go to her room. I get out of bed and stand at my door in the dark, eyes shut and fingers grazing the handle. But my fire dampens soon after, and I crawl back to bed to think of her some more.

\--

In the morning, I don’t see Marianne immediately. I go down before she does, for once, and find Sophie in the kitchen.

“I don’t know if Marianne told you,” she says, sitting beside me at the table with serious eyes. “But I’m still pregnant.”

I don’t say anything, but furrow my eyebrows in feeling for her.

“I’m going to see a woman who can stop it tomorrow, and Marianne said she’d come.”

“Oh. I’ll come too.”

Sophie’s eyes brighten subtly, not something I’ve seen happen often. “Will you?”

“Yes, of course.” It seems perfectly obvious to me.

Sophie smiles, very softly. “Thank you,” she nods.

There’s a pause. My eyes drift towards the door. “Marianne isn’t down yet.”

“It’s still early,” says Sophie, standing again in order to return to her work. But for a moment, she hesitates, and her eyes dart between me and the door. “You have a few days.”

I turn my head to look at her. “What?”

“Until your mother returns,” Sophie says, and doesn’t elaborate. She holds wisdom in her stare, for somebody so young. It’s not pity or scrutiny. Just acknowledgement.

Marianne does come down, but I disappear off through the house. I feel her eyes on the back of my head when I leave the room.

\--

Sometime later, after we’ve painted, I realise I can’t take it any longer.

I find her in the reception room with the door open, after I’ve changed out of the green dress. “I think we should go walking,” I tell her with urgency.

She looks up from the easel, and turns her whole body towards me.

Soon we’re out the door. It’s a windy day again, so we have our mouths covered. We don’t talk.

I lead Marianne down a path we haven’t gone before, and we perform a dance together down the rocks. She pulls me across by the arm, and I feel her breath on my cheek for just a moment. The night before, after Marianne took my hand, we held onto each other for some time, even after I was recovered from my burning. Since we let go we maintained some distance. But one touch ignites the need, and we take each other’s hands and arms again and again as we descend.

The grip we have on each other is alike in its protectiveness. At one point, still holding onto me, Marianne helps me down onto another rock, and once again we’re close, her arm grazing my shoulder. Every time I look at her she’s looking away, and every time she looks at me I do the same. I haven’t met her eyes all day.

Once we reach the sand we walk, but our hands stay together. Not clasped, just touching. I’ve never been so aware of myself. She strikes me with lightning every time we do so much as brush hands.

I can’t stand this. It takes all my energy to move my hand from Marianne’s, and when I do I rush forward, full of need. To find somewhere out of sight. I notice Marianne stops walking for a moment, but I know she’ll soon follow. I hear the women’s chanting from the night before. Encouraging me, pushing me forward.

There’s a cave. I enter it, walk right to the back. Then I turn around and wait.

Oh so slowly, the women’s voices fade out, and I’m left with the thrashing wind and waves. I try to hear them chanting again, but I’m too overwhelmed. I’m not afraid that Marianne won’t show, I know she will. I’m afraid because I know what I’m going to do when she gets here.

I see her walking slowly, deliberately. Following my footprints, never breaking our stare. She gets closer, and closer. I see it in her face. She knows.

I soon hear her breathing mix with mine. We find ourselves facing each other, breathless behind our wrapped mouths.

I move forward, only slightly. Eyes flickering up and down her face. She moves too, just a little more. I look at her hidden mouth and she looks at mine. Almost at the same time, we reach up and pull them away from our faces. We both tilt our heads to the right.

As our lips press together, I become lost to Marianne, and she to me. I shut my eyes on instinct, and revel in not only the feeling of it, but the action of it.

I’m kissing her. I’m kissing Marianne. My thoughts are no comparison.

When it breaks, so does the illusion. For a moment I lean against her face, but then we both pull away, and her hands leave my sides.

I look down. Instinct again. I know she’s looking at me.

I’ve never been so scared in my life. I glance at her once more, and rush back across the sand. On the way up the rocks I nearly collapse into shivers.

The taste of her lingers on.

How much of the breath in my mouth belongs to her?

Oh god. It’s all too much.

I rush in, and Sophie’s eyes dart all about the place. She doesn’t ask where Marianne is, but mentions that I look pale. I tell her that I won’t be eating, that I feel ill.

Ill. Am I ill? At the top of the stairs, I kneel down and put my hands onto the cool floor. I breathe in through my nose.

And when I hear the door open, I flee.

\--

Marianne doesn’t come looking for me immediately. Which is good, probably, because that means I’m left with some time to think. I lie in my bed, and then stand and walk to the window. The same way I did when deciding to go out with Marianne that first time. When I knew so little about her, not even the colour of her hair.

Now I know so much, too much. I know how it feels to have her breath on my face, and what she looks like while leaning into kiss me. I know that she tastes like the wind.

I keep replaying it again and again in my head. Her getting closer and closer until she’s all I can see, and we lean into each other.

What would Suzanne think?

I imagine her face. I haven’t seen it in years, so the image I conjure is of a younger, brighter woman than the one who sent me letters. She often scolded me and held herself with great poise, telling me off for my brazen anger.

“Héloïse!” the way she’d say my name when she snapped at me, with blue eyes blown like candle flames. But often she’d have to hide her amusement, though I always saw it in the twitching of her mouth.

Once, she took me walking, when I was an adolescent. We stood on the cliffs, and Suzanne told me she was in love.

“Who with?” I commanded, impatient to know.

Suzanne only smiled, and shook her head. “It doesn’t matter. It can’t happen.”

“Why not?”

“It’s unrequited.”

I frowned. “Oh.”

I remember how the wind whistled, and the waves crashed into foam on the shore. Suzanne turned to face me, then.

“You mustn’t let it pass you by,” she said, deep voice cracking. Her eyes shone with tears, as they did so often back then, when she was free to live honestly. She cried often, when things made her sad or happy. This time, it wasn’t clear which she was feeling, but her desperation for me to understand was so great that her hands began to shake. “When someone loves you back, you must not let it go. It’s such a rare thing, Héloïse. If you can make it possible, then do so. Won’t you?”

I told her I would. A great smile wobbled on her face, and she shut her eyes.

Those cliffs that we stood on would be the last ground she ever walked on. In the darkness of my room, I place a hand over my heart and swallow hard.

Then I go to Marianne’s room, and let myself in. I light the fire and let it roar, and then stand there and wait for her to arrive.

\--

I hear the footsteps before I see her. Slow and deliberate. They stop and start again. When she arrives, she stands in the doorway for a moment, and we look at each other. I say nothing.

She comes towards me. The urge to run, either away from her or to her, is so great that I have to pummel it down. She might be angry with me, and I couldn’t blame her. Maybe she’ll lash out. End what we have before it begins.

She doesn’t. Instead, Marianne reaches me, and slowly, slowly leans her head into the crook of my neck. She sighs noiselessly, but because I’m so close to her, I feel it as she exhales. Complete relief in both of us.

I try not to shake as I move my hands up Marianne’s arm and around her back. I grip onto her for the sake of us both. To stop either of us from collapsing. We fit neatly together, like it was always meant to be this way.

“I thought you had been scared off,” Marianne whispers into my neck.

I hold onto her, and stare off across the room. “You were right,” I say, “I am scared.”

Vulnerability seems like such an easy choice. All my walls have fallen and I want to be honest. I want her to understand and I want to understand her. I want to stay here forever.

I dip my head into Marianne’s neck and we unwind from each other. I move my hand down Marianne’s arm as she turns, her back to me. I look at her neck, and listen as she sighs through her nose and bends her head backwards so slightly, into me.

Can she feel how nervous I am? Does she hear my heart from where she’s standing? My eyes dart up and down, and eventually I watch my own hand movements. I follow the path of her skin, which I have traced a thousand times in the days that I have truly known her, like the trail I observed from my window. But now it’s Marianne who is untangled, and she bends into my touch.

The newness of all of this feels so monumental. Everything inside me longs for her, aches to hold her. Even when I’m this close, it’s not enough. “Do all lovers feel they’re inventing something?” I whisper, the words coming to mind with ease, as I stroke her chin.

When I trace my fingers along her lips, Marianne’s mouth opens, and she breathes onto my hand. I pull away again, and hover just barely under her chin.

“I know the gestures,” I admit into her ear, and watch her swallow. “I imagined it all, waiting for you.”

Back to stroking her throat. Collarbones. My eyes are shut, just feeling.

“You dreamt of me?” Marianne asks, breathless.

I open my eyes. “No.” Back to her ear. “I thought of you.”

That’s all it takes. Marianne tilts back and I meet her halfway. Forever unwinding each other like twine. We lean to the left this time, and become lost to each other again.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I told yis I'd be back.  
> This chapter hasn't got much substance to it, but I think that's alright considering that the remaining few may be a little emotionally taxing one way or another. Also, some of the dialogue or scene structure may be wrong. I struggled to find clips, which was disappointing as it meant I had to leave things out from fear of being inaccurate.  
> It was fun to write though. I love to see them happy.  
> Enjoy.

The night is long and lit by flames. I cannot get enough.

We don’t talk very much. At some point I think to shut the door, though I’m sure Sophie can still hear us echoing through the house. We start by trying to keep it down, but she isn’t quiet for very long, and I love listening to her. Every noise, every breath is a treasure. Every gasp and moan is a note of music. And she can be loud. So can I.

But I don’t care, I just don’t. All I can think of is Marianne.

Marianne. Her hair tangled through my fingers, spilling down her shoulders in a way I find so mesmerising. I want to put her hair up just to watch her take it down again.

She bends into me like a shadow lurching away from the sun, and chases my mouth and skin with fluttering kisses. She’s on top of me, trailing a finger along my jaw, and then about my thighs, and then further, and further still. And then she’s beneath me, hand over her open mouth and eyes all wild. When I put my mouth on her, she tastes like desire.

She’s a vision. She’s a painting. I think that this must be a dream, and keep trying to open my eyes.

But I can’t. I’m already awake.

\--

At least, I’m awake for a while. But at a certain point, I’m left battered and exhausted. In the best possible way, of course.

And when I open my eyes, it’s to the sound of knocking. That’s not my door and this is not my room, nor my bed. I’m instantly disillusioned, trying to piece it all together. I feel movement behind me but remain entirely still. I don’t dare turn. What if I imagined it all?

“You don’t want to come anymore?” sounds Sophie’s voice. I stare at the door.

“I’m coming.”

It takes only a buzzing moment before I quickly turn my head to see Marianne behind me. She’s pulling the white sheets to her chest, propped up on one elbow. Her dark hair is all about the place, and for a second I feel blank, maybe because I still think she will disappear.

Then she looks at me. There’s a moment’s hesitation where neither of us quite believe it.

Marianne lets go of the sheets and starts to smile at me, winding her arm around my waist. “Get up.”

I don’t realise that I’m grinning quite so madly until I see my own adoration reflected in her eyes. It’s happened! This is real. I slept beside Marianne. Oh, I did much more with Marianne.

She sits up, still smiling at me. I would stay looking at her all day, if Sophie were not waiting on us. So, I kiss her only once before we dress.

And then once after, on the stairs. She grins into my mouth, and her eyes flash like lightning in the fleeting glance she casts me before we both turn, so casually, into the kitchen.

\--

Sophie is very tense on the way there, and paces up and down outside the door. On the way back, she struggles to stand.

It grows dark early. Soon, we sit with Sophie as she rests (in Marianne’s bed, once again). My emotions have changed drastically from the high I felt this morning. I feel slight comfort when Marianne slides her hand onto mine.

“Go to bed,” she says. Her hand is warm. “I’ll watch over her.”

“I don’t want to go to bed,” I say pointedly. It takes a moment, but soon I realise what I both want and need to do. What we need to do.

Neither Marianne or Sophie ask what I have in mind but they soon realise the idea I’ve conjured. And neither protest. In fact, Sophie is very still in her pose, and Marianne’s eyes shine with pride. We all remain very quiet. I feel rather solemn. There is something to mourn. Some guilt in the action, I suppose, no matter how just it is. It’s no easy choice.

But we must have a choice. As we model by the fireside, some sickly realisation builds like bile in my throat. The thought that one day I will need to bear a child, and I will have no say at all.

It’s difficult to not think about that, especially now, in this position. But Marianne’s observing eyes and the final piece make me feel somewhat at peace with it if nothing else.

Maybe one day, things will be different. 

\--

I was so swept up in the solemn tone of yesterday that I forgot about all else. Including the portrait and the modeling and Marianne, and what would happen when all three things collided.

What happens is much unprofessionalism. To the fault of us both, but maybe more to me. I’m the one who can’t stop grinning.

At first she tries to ignore it. Marianne is not easily distracted, but her eyes flit up and down from the painting to me and back again, all the while a smile of her own grows on her face. I quickly give up on biting back the joy in my expression, and now I sit and stroke my own hand, smiling like all the world is mine. It certainly feels that way.

Eventually, Marianne sighs. “Stop that,” she says, somewhat firmly, despite the kindness in her eyes and the curving of her mouth.

“What?” I tease, still beaming and flushed.

Her eyes flicker back up and down, lingering in the end. “What you’re doing,” she near-whispers through a grin, in a voice so soft that it makes not smiling all the more difficult.

I do try, if only for a second. But every time I look at her some butterflies bat their wings in my stomach, the same way Marianne bats her eyelids at me while she speaks so lovingly. And it’s also difficult, not to imagine her in all the different ways I have seen. All the different expressions she’s made. All the noises. I brighten again and again.

Marianne’s stare holds a flash of adoration, but she shakes it away. “Be serious,” she tells me. I do try, returning best I can to my pose. I think she’ll return to painting, but it’s become ridiculous for me to assume I can guess her every action. Marianne is a constant surprise. This time, after holding my gaze momentarily, I watch a quiet dawning come over her face. I listen to the clatter as she places her brushes down, and begins to walk around the canvas.

“Keep still,” she says, all business. And unconsciously, I do. I don’t even smile, although inside I’m impatiently listening to every step she takes towards me.

She passes the bed where my convent dress is strewn (this time, I didn’t bother leaving the room to change). I impress myself with my own stillness, as Marianne reaches my side. I feel her observing me, eyes on my cheek. I’m much like a statue.

Marianne’s head leans into view. Diligently, I stare across the room with a blank expression, until she moves in closer and closer, and in the last second, I stop posing and meet her eyes moments before she kisses me.

We’re no longer weightless or breathless, thank god. She puts her hand on my leg, and I reach for her neck.

We don’t get much painting done.

\--

We lie naked together in the white sheets. She is on my right, and watches intently as I balance a small box on my stomach. I explain to Marianne, who wears a distantly bemused face, that I got it from a woman at the bonfire, who said it made time last longer. She must have seen something in the way I clung to Marianne after my dress was caught alight, but instead of being disgusted, she understood.

“She said it makes you fly,” I tell her. Marianne seems amused.

“Have you tried it?” I ask.

Marianne brings a hand to her cheek to half-cover her smile. “No.”

I nuzzle into her, filling up with adoration and anticipation. “Do you want to?”

Marianne’s eyes tell it all. I take some of the substance and smear it onto my fingers, then begin rubbing it into my armpit. As I do, Marianne leans forward to smell the box, and I can’t help but grin at the sight.

\--

The woman at the bonfire was right. Everything feels so slow. And I can hear every breath and every change in the air.

There are a million pieces under the skin that I have not known about until Marianne touched them. Everywhere her fingertips brush lights them up. She’s lightning and thunder. Her eyes have gone so dark.

I rub it into her armpit. Not something I thought I’d ever find as attractive or alluring as I do. But this is Marianne. Everything she does makes me want her even more. When we kiss, her mouth is so wet, and she shivers like a newly born sapling in the spring. She moves away and swirls like an abstract painting. Her pupils are blown and black.

“Your eyes,” she whispers, like she can read my mind.

I kiss her again, and then push her down on the bed. Outside, it grows dark, but the flames spark on. Marianne bends. A thousand arms all belonging to her wrap around me. She’s everywhere.

We last a long time. Or maybe we don’t, in reality. But this doesn’t feel like reality anymore.

\--

I’m exhausted. Slipping in and out. I find myself in bed at one groggy interval. Marianne isn’t here, but I trust that she’ll be back. She said something about water.

The room has stopped swirling. I try to think, but it’s all too foggy. I just feel warm. Safe. I think the inside of my thighs will be bruised in the morning, but that doesn’t matter. I’d do it again. We _will_ do it again.

I’m just so tired. I’m nearly asleep when I feel her weight back on the bed. I can barely open my eyes, but I still know when Marianne’s shadow crosses my face. I stir when her fingers brush over my forehead and let her know that I’m a little in tune by reaching up to take her wrist.

When I tilt my head and peer upwards, I see her sat on me. Hair loose, eyes fond, and full of intent. “You need to drink,” she says, fingers still on my face. Her words are soft but firm. I make no move, but don’t need to. She knows me well enough to be aware of my persistent stubbornness, especially in the face of sleep.

So, instead, I watch through cracked-open eyes as Marianne brings a glass of water to her lips. She doesn’t swallow it. Instead, she returns the glass and lowers her mouth onto mine. My eyelids flicker shut again. The water is warm. I don’t mind at all and take it like we do this all the time. Would someone laugh, if they could see this now? Maybe. It’s a bit funny.

Marianne breaks the kiss and pulls away. Satisfied.

And in this moment, I honestly believe that I have never been happier in my entire life.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well. This is a tough one.  
> It includes one of my favourite scenes in the film. So I'm terrified that I didn't do it justice.  
> That's for you to decide, I suppose.  
> Enjoy.

Colour, I have come to learn, is not such a concrete thing. There is not one green, for example. And it’s not simply dark green and light green either. You can mix it with a little blue or yellow and it will change. And the same can be said for blue and yellow, and all other colours. There are so many possibilities.

I explain this to Marianne while she paints me in the morning, and she beams all the way through my rambling.

“Am I being foolish?” I ask her, when I notice the soft smile pursing her lips.

“No,” she is quick to deny it, but not unconvincing. “You’re right.”

“But it’s obvious, to you.”

“Maybe. But I’ve been doing this all my life,” she says, the smile spreading like a seabird’s wings. “I like to hear you talk about it.”

“Because it makes you feel intelligent?” I ask, and watch Marianne squirm.

“No,” she insists, but then realises my teasing grin. She pretends to be unamused.

“Forgive me,” I shift in my pose, trying to keep from laughing. She ignores me, pointedly. “Marianne! Tell me what you meant.”

For a moment she keeps painting. But then her gaze flickers to me. I wonder, often, if her eyes always shine, or if they only do that when we’re looking at each other.

“I do like to hear you talk about art,” she elaborates, slowly. Still focused on the portrait. “But I also like when you talk about other things. I think I just like to listen to you.”

She says that last piece shyly. I think I might turn into melting snow, but manage to remain seated, though I feel pink creep onto my cheeks.

We’re quiet for some time. Then Marianne puts the paintbrush down, and meets my eyes. She squints, the way she does when she’s made a conscious decision. “Come here.”

She shows me how to mix the green for my dress. Adding blues and yellows. She stands particularly close to me, and so I’m unable to hide my joy. Marianne presses her nose into the side of my face.

I stop, and look up. Greeting my own angered stare.

“This time, I like it,” I say.

Marianne observes me, eyes dipping up and down my face. “Perhaps because I know you better.”

“Perhaps I’ve changed.”

“Perhaps,” she giggles like a girl. I beam at her, and twitch my head.

We look at the portrait some more. But then I look at Marianne.

“You didn’t destroy the last one for me,” I say, certainly. Fondly. “You did it for you.”

When she returns my gaze, Marianne isn’t smiling anymore. Her eyes still shine, but not for me, I don’t think. “I’d like to destroy this one too,” she tells me, brazen and unapologetic. But her voice is shaking all the time.

I don’t understand. The lightness seeps out of my cheeks, and I drop my smile. “Why?”

Marianne flutters. She moves away from me, and from the portrait, hand to her neck. She turns, and forces the words from her mouth. “Through it, I give you to another.”

The heaviness is leaden in her voice, and it feels so sudden. But it can’t have come from nowhere. Has she been carrying this bitter doom with her all morning? All week? Since she realised what she felt for me?

Maybe I’m rash with my anger. But it’s already upon us, a great lurching, growling monster. I need to step away from her for a second more, and the distance between us grows. But when I turn it all comes spilling out. “It’s terrible. Now you possess me a little, you bear me a grudge.”

“I don’t,” Marianne says. She’s a terrible liar.

“You do. You know you do,” I gesture at her, exasperated. We stare at each other, neither crumbling. “You’re not on my side now. You blame me for what comes next. My marriage. You don’t support me.”

Marianne’s face remains still. Her mouth a straight line. “You’re right.”

I step closer again. Glare at her, long and hard. Marianne doesn’t shiver away from my gaze. “Go on,” I hiss, “say what burdens your heart.”

Her mouth opens, and shuts, and remains closed. I stay still, but I want to roar. “I believed you braver.”

“I believed you braver too,” Marianne returns. This is anger, that I’m seeing glower in her stare. I saw it before, when I told her I didn’t like the first portrait. She’s more restrained now. I wish she wouldn’t be. I wish she’d shout at me, and tell me the truth loudly. I wish women were not trained to stay polite.

“That’s it then,” I seethe. Marianne shifts. “You find me docile. Worse…”

I hesitate, noticing for the first time what threatens to pour from my eyes gone glassy. But I press forward: “You imagine I’m collusive. You imagine my pleasure.”

“It’s a way of avoiding hope,” Marianne speaks in defence of herself. Angry, at me. At _me!_ What part of this is down to me?

The monster of wrath shivers. It doesn’t shrink, but it changes. My anger is cold rather than hot. And it’s then that I feel the salty tears stain my cheeks, and I hear them shaking in my voice when I hiss at her.

“Imagine me happy or unhappy if that reassures you,” My voice is breaking. I start to shudder with the dragging weight of emotion, chained to my ankles. “But do not imagine me guilty.”

Marianne doesn’t respond. I think she’s alarmed. She hasn’t seen me weep before. In fact, it’s been a long, long time since I cried. I didn’t cry when Suzanne died, only seethed and barked and refused to sit for portraits. For a man who didn’t see me the way Marianne does.

I’m still angry. It blisters, red and ugly in my throat. “You’d prefer me to resist,” I press on, despite the rattling of my words. I wipe my eye, hiding half of my face.

Marianne hesitates. I think she hates to see me like this, which is why I won’t look away. She responds dutifully. Honestly. “Yes.”

If she asks me, I will say yes. I will probably cry harder, from relief. I will resist my fate for her, if she asks me to.

But what makes me so furious is that, before I even ask the question, I know her answer.

“Are you asking me to?” I chatter, heaving. Hands on my hips, to steady myself for when I inevitably start to crumble.

Marianne doesn’t respond. A wild wave roars within me. “Answer me,” I bark at her, the tears slipping down my face.

When she turns back, I hold a note of hope. That desperate creature, buried at the bottom of Pandora’s box. For a moment, Marianne hesitates, and I wonder if my strings of fate have not yet been woven.

But then she delivers it, crushing and certain. “No.”

Knife to the gut. Twisted, again and again. I turn immediately, unable to look at Marianne anymore. The door bangs upon my exit.

I manage to be devastated even when I knew the outcome. I knew Marianne would never ask me to resist, no matter how willing I would be. I would risk humiliation and ruination for the sake of her. For a chance with her, a possibility. If only she would ask.

But she can’t. Because Marianne is the poet. And I am the lover.

I think this is when my heart starts to break.

\--

The sea is angry today. I was right, when I believed first that I would not be able to run in this dress. It drags in the sand and ruffles with the wind. I would be a sight to any onlooker, but there is no one here. I am alone, entirely alone.

Is being free being alone? I asked that question of Marianne, once, before I realised that she would be the woman I carry in my heart. No matter if I wanted it or not. I cannot fly from this awful, awful feeling.

It is so awful. It hurts, a physical pain in my chest. I might be bleeding from the inside. But I keep walking, past the water, to the rocks.

I stand there for some time. More tears boil on the heat of my cheeks, but soon the wind cools them. Though my wrath remains intact. My heartbreak roars on.

And then, from nowhere, a pair of arms are thrown around me. The fright lasts a millisecond before I recognize the embrace. But these arms are not tender. Instead, they clasp to me like if I’m not held onto tight enough, I’ll turn to dust. To sand. Marianne clings onto me so that I stagger about for a moment. But even after the shock and the rush of her arrival, I remind myself of what she blames me for. I stay staring at the rocks and the sea.

My stubborn expression remains until I hear that she’s crying.

“Forgive me,” she pleads, shivering. It rips through my heart, but I remain facing away. Her breaths hiss into my neck, one, two, three, four, five, six. Marianne clings to me like ivy to an old house. I don’t shrug her off.

Her desperation bleeds red into the sand. She leans into my ear. “Forgive me,” she says again like I didn’t hear her the first time. I’m fit to burst like a heart overwhelmed, over-loved. I don’t know if one can be over-loved. I feel dry-throated now, just from lack of kissing her.

My stone face remains all the while. But it cracks when I give no response to Marianne’s repeated plea and hear her sob loudly in my ear. I don’t relent entirely, but almost by instinct, I gently take the hands she had wound around me. Her cry cuts out and turns back to breath, hot on my neck, still wracked by sorrow.

Then she leans up to my ear again, and tells me in a broken voice: “Your mother returns tomorrow.” Followed by another choked wail.

Forgiveness rolls like a wave returning to the ocean. I turn around. Marianne is a wreck, and she wastes no time. Taking my head in her hands and pulling me in. I clasp onto her back and keep my eyes open. We are trying to kiss each other, even while Marianne’s sobs continue to pour. Her hair is in my mouth. So desperate that she forgets how to breathe through a kiss, and has to break away just to gulp down the air.

But she can’t let go of me. And I realise, as her wet face presses against mine, the sheer amount of time we have wasted, just with that fight. The horrific, dawning reality, that we have not done enough of this. I hold her tightly, and in my sudden surge of need, I stagger forwards, trying to get impossibly close. Marianne steadies us, but we still shake on the sand. Forgetting how to breathe or stand like normal people. I don’t think we can be normal people anymore.

Marianne’s hands are on my neck. She sniffs and sighs, having to break the kiss again. This time, we don’t re-join once we’ve caught our breath, instead leaning against each other. Marianne doesn’t look at me, staring down at the beach as she heaves the salty air. I look at her. Face battered by wind and sorrow. Sorrow risen from the want of me. I realise, in a horrible rush, what she must have expected to find when she escaped down to the beach. Was she looking for my body from up on the cliffs?

I couldn’t do that. Even if I wanted to, I couldn’t die where she would find me.

I reach up to cup Marianne’s cheek and watch her face crumple. She’s still trying to breathe. Still crying so hard. So am I, I realise. The pair of us are such a sight. Even if someone was looking, I wouldn’t care. Let them look.

I pet her face and she pets mine. Eventually, Marianne unbends and meets my stare. So she can see that I’m here, I’m alive. That I’m sorry for scaring her. Behind us, foam explodes across the sand. She checks me all over my face, to make sure I'm alright. I begin to say something. But there’s too much and too little. She already knows that I love her. I retire my attempt and go back to stroking her face. Marianne melts, and pulls me closer again, stroking my head with both hands. Painter’s hands. I think I’m crying.

She sobs again. I steady her, and cry silently, the tears rolling like the waves. Like forgiveness. I pet her chest, afraid to some degree that she might vanish. That my hand might pass through her.

Marianne stays solid. With her thumbs, she wipes the tears from my cheeks.

\--

When we return inside with faces beaten red by sobbing and by wind, we pass Sophie, who doesn’t say a word. Our unspoken understanding remains intact. I will always be grateful to her for this, I think.

I return to the stage. Fix myself in the mirror on the floor. And look up, only to see Marianne focused intently on me. Her hair came apart somewhere along the way.

“Come here,” she says, for the second time today. “With me.” A much more solemn tone.

I wander over slowly. And we both look at the portrait, who looks back at us. Doom stares me dead in the face.

“When do we know it’s finished?” I ask Marianne.

She pauses for a moment. “At one point, we stop.”

She flicks her paintbrush three times. Dress. Neck. Ear.

She draws her hand away.

“Finished,” she concludes.

Marianne puts the paintbrush down. She moves her hands towards my face and tilts her head back. I kiss her, and try not to start crying again.

Somehow, though, I forget, and lose myself in her mouth. Just for a little while.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is short and bittersweet and I got a little choked up in the process of writing it. But it's of my favourites from what I have written so far, I think.  
> And you may now notice that there are only two chapters to go! I promise to make them worthwhile.  
> Let me know your thoughts.  
> Enjoy.

For some time, we lie in bed and soak up each other’s company as the fire crackles. When Marianne starts to sketch me, I don’t ask any questions. I just lounge, smile. We regard each other.

The miniature she’s making isn’t of my current self. I catch a glimpse and see myself in the green dress with hair tied up. Serious, staring. This is the image she’s observed the most of me. I must be stamped into her memory, now. The thought makes me smile.

“Who’s that for?” I ask eventually, breaking a comfortable quiet.

Marianne looks up at me. Her hair is a little wild, torn out from constraints. Her eyes are shiny and dark, and she doesn’t blink while she takes in my question. “For me,” she answers in a lovely, soft voice. The corners of her pink mouth twitch into a smile.

She returns to the miniature. I watch her fondly, unable to resist a smile of my own. I’m rather tired, after all the hot and cold I felt today. But I want to avoid shutting my eyes as much as possible, and I want to be looking at her for the rest of today. Ideally, for the rest of time. If that were possible.

“You can reproduce that image to infinity,” I realise aloud.

Marianne exhales through her nose, another smile catching the corners of her mouth. “Yes,” is all she says, still soft. Glancing up at me again. Back down. Back up. Another slight laugh, and a show of teeth. She looks so beautiful, here. And always.

I try to match her hushed voice, though I will never sound so alluring. And there’s some unshakeable sadness under my tone. “After a while,” I say quietly, looking at the miniature. “You’ll see her when you think of me.”

Marianne stops sketching to meet my eyes, which share that crushing, knowing feeling. I hate to remind her what will meet us upon the horizon, but it would be just as strange to ignore it. We stay like this for a moment.

Upon another thought, another smile graces my lips, momentarily. I wish I could memorize her in return. I have never wanted to be a painter, but recently I’ve come to understand the allure. The romance. Painters must have good memory, of human form and faces, and the way hair falls across shoulders. I don’t know if I have that, but I can’t imagine forgetting Marianne.

Still, I mourn the loss of anything concrete. “I’ll have no image of you.”

Marianne hesitates. Flickers her gaze. When she looks at me again, her eyes are so loving. I’ve never been looked at like that, by anyone. With such tenderness. I dissolve under her dear stare and know it’s one of the many things I will ache for in the years to come. “Do you want an image of me?” Marianne asks in a shaky near-whisper.

I return the fondness. “Yes.”

“Which one?”

The answer comes easy. With a nod of my head, I gesture. “That one.”

Marianne looks, trying to catch my meaning, and then understands. That I want to remember her this way, before me in full vulnerability. She laughs at my boldness, but to my delight, doesn’t deny my request. “Give me your book.”

My book! Another piece of Marianne to keep, and within the pages, she’ll be there, laid out in all honesty. I hand over the small copy.

“Give me a figure.”

I think on this for only a second. “28.”

Our common age. Marianne smiles with her pink mouth and shining eyes. To think, all the beautiful pieces of her (which is every piece) will be reproduced upon that page. Forever representing us, now. Young and full of desire, before time begins to take us bit by bit. Some things will remain. Not everything is fleeting.

The flames spark. Soon, there’s a mirror propped up against my loins, and Marianne sketches herself on page 28. She needs a mirror for reference. She has not memorized herself the way she has with me. All the while, I watch her, propped up by one arm. And when she hands me the finished piece, I shut my eyes and clasp it to my heart. But for now, I have the real Marianne on the bed before me, and so I put the book down and take her in my arms. It would take a flock of seagulls to pull me away.

\--

Later, we face each other on her bed, in the fire-lit night. I haven’t looked away from Marianne since the portrait was finished.

“How is it,” she began earlier, after kissing me long and hard in a tangle of sheets. “That I have gone my whole life without knowing you?”

I kissed her again before answering, let her whimper into my mouth. “How is it that we found each other at all?”

And it’s true. The chances were so slim.

And maybe it’s awful to think. But would it have been better if Marianne had never arrived on this island? If my mother had hired someone else? If I had never fallen so hard, in a way that makes it feel impossible to ever get back up?

My thoughts are beginning to ebb, and melancholy bleeds like ink. Seeing her there makes it worse, so I shut my eyes to curb the feeling. It’s nearly a relief to relax. I’ve had my eyes open all day, not wanting to miss her for a moment.

Marianne is quick to catch on. “Your eyes are closing,” she whispers. She thinks that staying awake all night will prevent rosy-fingered dawn from rising through the clouds. I keep my eyes shut.

She sucks in a breath like she is afraid I’ll be lost within moments. “Don’t go to sleep,” she tells me, and repeats thrice more, leaning in. “Don’t go to sleep, don’t go to sleep, don’t go to sleep…”

Marianne presses a sweet kiss to the corner of my mouth. And then lies back to her watching position. I open my eyes but am greeted by immediate, profound sadness. Greater than it was moments ago. Still, I see her there and smile.

But. I can’t hide my aching, and find I don’t want to. “I feel something new,” I admit, my tone already leaden.

Marianne senses this. I wonder if she can see that I have started to cry. It may be too dark to tell. But I feel the sorrow brimming.

“What?” Marianne asks. Nearly afraid to know.

A tear spills over the crook of my nose. “Regret,” I confess.

Marianne breathes. Her chest expands.

“Don’t regret,” she tells me. “Remember.”

I stare at her. And then I blink. She is a poet, truly. My poet.

Still, she senses my hesitance. She always knows what I am feeling, or about to feel. Never oblivious or uncertain. And yet, Marianne presses on. “I’ll remember when you fell asleep in the kitchen.”

I can’t help but brighten. Marianne looks at me as if to say: _your turn._ “I’ll remember,” I begin after a second’s thought, “Your dark look when I beat you at cards.”

She laughs. I do the same. Which pulls another memory from her, as her next point is: “I’ll remember the first time you laughed.”

“You took your time being funny,” I smile.

Marianne laughs again, in her admittance: “That’s true.” And then she turns a little serious, with a pair of large eyes. “I wasted time.”

“I wasted time too,” I concede. I try not to regret it, like she asked. But it’s difficult, to not wish that I had told her these things sooner. Kissed her sooner, and more often.

Which reminds me of the harpsichord. “I’ll remember the first time I wanted to kiss you.”

To my delight, Marianne's expression splits into rare and precious surprise. “When was that?” she asks breathily, shifting forward a little in the bed. In her dark eyes, I watch her rewind all our moments. All my gazes, trying to pick it out.

It seems so obvious to me, but I refuse to hand it to her. “You didn’t notice?”

Marianne thinks back. “At the feast around the bonfire,” she tries.

I hum at that memory, where the flames burned hot between us. Where I realised that these feelings were too great to fly from. “I wanted to, yes,” I tease, and watch Marianne light up and grin like a child. “But that wasn’t the first time.”

Marianne’s bright eyes fade as she thinks harder. “Tell me,” she insists, moving closer again.

I won’t give in. “No, you tell me.”

In a moment where we stare at each other, and something flickers in Marianne, that profound upset crawls back and sits, swelling my chest. But I let it grow. Grief is an insistent creature. Often, it arrives before you’ve even lost anything.

It’s reflected in Marianne too. But in the heat of approaching heartache, she makes a decision. Her choice begins with an inhale.

“When you had asked if I’d know love,” she begins. Pauses. Swallows.

My eyes are glistening again.

Another breath is taken: “I could tell the answer was yes. And that it was now.”

I am still. More so than I have ever been. I remember that night in the kitchen. Marianne’s shaking eyes. Her timid but certain: “Yes.”

She loved me. From all that time ago. And she loves me now, too. Marianne loves me from where she lies in the dark, taking me in with each inhale. And I think that she will love me for a long time.

The words come easy to me.

“I remember,” I tell her.

And I cannot, will not forget.


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another short chapter. Second to last.  
> Thank you for all the lovely comments you left last time! It's always so good to hear from you.  
> In the process of writing this, I'm reliving all the emotions! But this time I'm breaking my own heart.  
> As always, let me know what you think.  
> And enjoy.

I don’t remember falling asleep. But I wake up twice, once before morning. I don’t know what does it, but when I open my eyes I see Marianne lying very close to my face. Before I’m stolen back into my troubled dreams, I reach out and put my fingers just below her collarbones. She doesn’t stir. I smile, and shut my eyes.

When I wake a second time, Marianne isn’t there. But I still see her indent. When I splay out one sleepy hand to feel the mattress, it’s still warm.

I hear her come up the stairs soon after, and when she enters the room she is dressed and quick on her feet. I know instantly that there is something wrong, and begin to pull myself up as Marianne sits by me.

She wastes no time. “They’re here.” And looks at me, finally.

I don’t say anything. For a moment, it doesn’t quite set in. That this is ending.

I don’t know what pulls me to do it, but I get out of bed. I go and retrieve my corset, and know that Marianne is watching me all the while. When I turn back, her dark eyes are shaking. I don’t know what to say to her. I don’t think I know anything anymore.

I turn so she can lace me up. I rock slightly every time she pulls the strings.

\--

My mother is well. She still acts a little coldly towards Marianne, but when she examines the painting, she is satisfied.

“Very good,” she says, in a resigned sort of way. She pulls out a small white envelope and delivers it to Marianne with both hands. “For you.”

Marianne accepts the payment. “Thank you,” she says, like she doesn’t want it at all.

My mother, still acting somewhat frigid, turns away and walks across the room. Marianne meets my eyes, and we stare at each other until I’m called: “Héloïse…”

Reluctantly, I look at my mother, stood by the door. “Come with me,” she says.

Strangely, I struggle for a moment to find my voice. I haven’t spoken all morning, and yesterday I talked only to Marianne. “In a minute,” I manage in the end.

“No, now,” says my mother, with an air of impatience. “I have a gift for you.”

Dread glues me to the floor for just a moment, and I have to tear myself away. I feel numb, but consciously hate that I could be walking away from Marianne, and never be so close to her again. So at the door, I manage to catch a quick glimpse of her. Her mouth is open, and the envelope is shaking in her grasp.

\--

The dress is white and extravagant. I put it on slowly, unwillingly, and without a word. As my mother fixes it, she tells me I look beautiful.

“You must already feel like a bride,” she says with an air of excitement on my behalf.

I don’t feel like a bride. I feel like a ghost. I feel dead.

I know Marianne is at the door for the long seconds before she enters. So when she comes in, I’m ready to meet her eyes, and I witness the shock in her face. Not that it’s easy to tell; in fact, her expression hardly shifts. But I can tell. With her, I always can.

My mother eventually notices that Marianne has entered the room to say goodbye, and watches as she slowly approaches with an entirely still expression.

“Have a safe journey,” says my mother, genuinely. The coldness seems to have ebbed at last. I think some part of her understands Marianne more than she’d care to acknowledge.

I watch blankly, as though through a window. Marianne, who seems to be spinning, lost at how this is all moving so quickly, dares to break my mother’s gaze just to look at me. Is she trying, still, to memorize my face?

She does one more surprising thing and pulls my mother in for an awkward hug. I don’t instantly understand why, but when Marianne meets my eyes again over my mother’s shoulder, I realise what she’s going to do next.

And yet, even as she pulls away and regards me with intent, I feel numb. I don’t believe that this can be the last time.

But I am brought alive again when Marianne dives in and clasps me to her, soaking up my scent. The storm sweeps me up, and it all rises at once. Every feeling. Every memory. Swimming about between us, roaring like fire or crashing like waves.

It ends too quickly. With some enormous self-control, Marianne pulls herself away and marches off across the room without a word.

By the time I realise that cannot be our goodbye, Marianne has left the room, and my mother is frozen with some sort of realisation. I feel her looking at me, but suddenly that doesn’t matter. Milan doesn’t matter. The wedding dress doesn’t matter.

And much like the day I met Marianne, I am overcome. I run.

The chase is all a blur. I’m not even sure that she hears me coming. Each of Marianne’s steps is a heartbeat in my throat. I can’t even think of what I want to say, am going to say. Even when I get close, I don’t try and reach out. My mouth is hanging open. I see the back of her head. Her dark hair, neatly tied, which I ran my fingers through. The brown coat I modeled once while she lay in bed and laughed. The red dress she stepped out of and put back on, and every time I watched. Her hands, which painted me, then held me. The thumbs that wiped the tears off my face. The neck I peppered with teasing kisses before I made my way up to her mouth.

Marianne runs down and down and down. For a moment it feels like I’m not running after her at all, and instead that I’m a ghost haunting the halls, only able to watch on.

But I’m not a ghost. I never died. I can say something.

And I do. I find my words just as she opens the door, and realise instantly what she has to do.

“Turn around.”

Marianne stops.

Hesitates.

Turns.

The allure of the living world lights her up from behind, as she breathes with heaving shoulders. Her eyes shine. She nearly smiles at me.

I don’t see her reach out to pull the door shut. But she must do it, because suddenly, she’s gone.

I know she’s not really gone. In fact, I wonder afterwards, when I rush over and collapse against the door, if she’s still on the other side. If she couldn’t pull herself away immediately? Has she sunk to the floor too? Is she stroking the doorframe like it’s my face?

I start crying, but don’t even notice until a sob escapes my throat. My face has grown numb, so I don’t feel the wetness on my cheeks.

I hear footsteps descend the stairs, and then my name: “Héloïse!” But when I turn to look at my mother, her indignant expression fades. After a moment of watching me shake, she slowly looks away and starts to climb the stairs. Leaving me here.

The worst thing. Is that I know I could open the door, and run after Marianne. Throw my arms around her, and beg. Ask her to make the lover’s choice. Maybe just so we can kiss for the last time, while I’m paying attention, so I can take it in. Remember exactly how it felt, how she tasted, and smelt. So I can shed my shock, and hold her.

I could. I could open the door.

I know I won’t.


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I didn't mean to update quite so soon, but due to circumstances I wouldn't have been able to upload the final piece tomorrow or the day after, and I didn't want to leave you in the dark.  
> I hope it's not too awfully done. The final scene was probably the hardest for me to write out from Héloïse's perspective.  
> Good luck.

In the final nights I spend in this house before we leave for Milan, I sleep in Marianne’s bed. On her side, in the dent she made. If I imagine hard enough, it nearly feels like she is holding me.

\--

He’s kind. That doesn’t mean I’m going to love him. But I think he understands that and doesn’t expect too much from me.

\--

I put myself back together. Not every day is dark.

\--

My daughter is a beautiful creature. One day, I will read to her from my little book, and tell her the story of Orpheus and Eurydice. And then, another day, I will tell her what my sister told me on the cliffs all those years ago. That if a great love is possible, please make it so. The pain is worth it.

\--

I wish I had said her name more, when we together. When she could’ve responded. Now, I call for her at every opportunity, and of course she never shows.

“Marianne,” I whisper as I rock my daughter to sleep. Her eyelids flicker, but she’s too young to wonder who I’m asking for.

“Marianne,” I mouth in an unbothered crowd, when they’re all too busied to notice. They swarm around me like wasps.

“Marianne!” I ask desperately of the dark, in my expansive garden. A sob catches in my throat, and I fall down on the grass halfway through calling for her a second time.

\--

I still think about her, but that doesn’t mean some days aren’t happy. It gets easier.

\--

My daughter’s hair does not grow darker as my husband suggested it may. I think she will have my hair after all. Some selfish part of me wishes, sometimes, that she had dark hair. The kind that goes wild when let down. But I think that Marianne would like for her to look like me, even a little. So I think on that instead.

\--

Over the years, I nearly devour page 28. I keep it in a safe place, but pull it out every night without fail, for six years.

\--

When she’s old enough, my husband suggests that we have a mother and daughter portrait commissioned. At first, I’m not keen on the idea. I don’t want to be observed like that by someone who isn’t Marianne.

But then, I realise that maybe she will see it. It’s not impossible.

\--

The painter is a young man with hands that shake, so at first, I’m unimpressed. But he is respectful to my daughter and I, and when he picks up a paintbrush his hands stop trembling. He also listens to my requests, to paint me with a certain expression.

“Is it a message?” he asks, a little boldly.

I don’t smile but appreciate it nonetheless. “Yes.”

He doesn’t ask anything else. Perhaps he doesn’t want to know. I’m nearly disappointed.

The look I deliver in the portrait is a knowing one. I nod in approval but have one final request.

“On the book,” I suggest, nodding at the page on show. “In the corner. I would like it to read ‘28’.”

He blinks. “Another message.”

I don’t answer this time. He picks up his smallest paintbrush. When the number is printed there, I feel myself soften.

“Thank you,” I say. With some solemnity, he nods.

“I hope the message is delivered,” he says before he leaves with the payment.

As do I.

\--

My husband knows for my love of Vivaldi and is the first to tell me when the news of a concert arises.

“Could I go?” my daughter asks brightly.

My husband laughs. “You’re too young, Suzanne.”

“One day,” I tell her, in all earnest. “But this is something I must do alone.”

There’s no argument.

\--

It’s a busy evening. I relish the moments where I talk to nobody and live in quiet freedom. This concert hall feels like somewhere outside of time.

I move quickly and quietly to my seat and wait for the music to begin.

And of course. They begin with the summer storm.

I cannot take my eyes away, but in reality, I’m not seeing how they pull the violins or swing their heads in movement with the music. All I see is Marianne.

I’m rocked with total memory. Not just with how she looked – intelligent face and light-up eyes, gaping mouth and painterly, steady hands. But I feel her too. Caressing my jaw. Clutching me from behind. Her mouth on mine.

It’s all such a rush. I haven’t remembered like this in years. But as it halts and starts up, whistling through the air, I see her fingers on the keys. I hear her recounting words. I remember wanting to kiss her, and pretending to be patient. I remember just how impatient I really was, and the way it all spilled out of me in that first night between us.

I shut my eyes and rock ever so slightly, trying to grasp it.

“Look at me.”

“More.”

“Come here. With me.”

I open my eyes again, and feel numb in the face. I still don’t see the orchestra. I’m not really here. I’m living as intensely as I did when I was young, swept by the summer storm that was Marianne. I feel my anger at her betrayal, and the relief when she destroyed that painting. That idea.

My mouth is open like hers so often was. The way I teased her because of that.

I breathe in. Out. In. Out. I’m in love again. I was never out of it. Every time I inhale, I gain a piece of her. Another word. Another smile. Another gasp or touch.

Flinging arms on the beach. Her sobbing in my ear.

“Forgive me.”

I choke.

_“Forgive me.”_

I forgive her a million times over. I fall and fall and fall again. I never got back up.

She holds my face. From the other side of the bed, she tells me that she loves me.

She breathes me in.

I tremble and shake. She’s everywhere. She’s swirling like the wind, like the music. She’s covering her mouth to keep from making too much noise. She’s smiling while I tell her what I think of art. She’s laughing with crinkled eyes. She’s indignant because I’ve won the card game. She glimmers at my boldness.

“You’re cheating!”

“You’re pretty.”

“Stop that.”

“Be serious.”

She kisses me. She tilts her head backwards and falls forwards. She leans in again and again and again. Each time I catch her in my mouth.

She grins like a girl.

Her eyes shine when she sees me.

And through my tears, I smile. I laugh.

I breathe in Marianne.

The music shakes.

Her mouth is on my neck.

“Don’t regret.”

We unwind from each other.

“Remember.”

I do. I always do.

\--

The summer storm plays out. Tears continue to pour throughout the rest of the performances.

I miss her eyes on me. But even as the final piece cuts and the tears slither down my cheeks, I feel she’s here in some manner. Observing me with melting eyes. So before the ghostly feeling fades, I clutch at my heart with a closed fist.

“I love you,” I mouth as raucous applause rings out around the room. “I love you. I love you. I still think of you, always.”

I think she would believe me if she could see me now. She would know that I have always been in love with her, and the feeling has only grown. From one-sided glances to smiling stares, to desperately clutching onto what it felt like to be seen. I will love Marianne forever. And I will not regret it.

It takes much of my strength, but I stand and head for the door. All the while I imagine that she still sees me.

And then as I leave the room, that watching feeling disappears. But I remain, not vanished, simply somewhere else.

Despite it all, I keep living. And after my death, I will stay in the paintings Marianne made of me. And she will stay on page 28.

We will never vanish.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So.  
> Let me know what you think. I know this whole retelling is a bit of a mess. But it was pretty therapeutic to write, so. I hope you got something out of it too!  
> Merci.  
> C'est fini.


End file.
